CEO’s, morality, and minds: How good and bad guide our perceptions of others

Morality colors the way we view the world, but how it influences our judgments of others is a controversial debate. One popular view is that morality biases people’s perceptions of others—specifically others’ intentions. I suggest that this view is incorrect. Instead, valence, not morality, guides
perception, and it does so in a way that may be
adaptive.

CEOs, morality and minds

One popular view in contemporary moral psychology is that people are biased by immorality. That is, when people see an immoral behavior (as compared to a moral one), it has been suggested that they automatically make a moral judgment of the responsible person (e.g., by blaming them), and that moral judgment biases perceptions of the person’s mental states (e.g., their supposed intent).

To illustrate, let’s consider two scenarios and propose a question following each one.

A Vice-president of a major company goes to the CEO and tells him. “We are thinking about starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also harm the environment.”

The CEO responds, “I don’t care at all about harming the environment. I just want to make as much profit as possible. Let’s start the new program.” They started the program, and sure enough the environment was harmed.

Did the CEO intentionally harm the environment?

Got your answer? Great. Now consider a nearly identical scenario:

A Vice-president of a major company goes to the CEO and tells him. “We are thinking about starting a new program. It will help us increase profits, but it will also help the environment.” The

CEO responds, “I don’t care at all about helping the environment. I just want to make as much profit as possible. Let’s start the new program.” They started the program, and sure enough the environment was helped.

Did the CEO intentionally help the environment?

If you’re like most people, you will think that the answer to these questions are at odds. In the original study on what has come to be known as the “side-effect effect”, 82% of respondents said that the CEO intentionally harmed the environment, but only 23% said that the CEO intentionally helped the environment (Knobe, 2003).

These divergent judgments present a puzzle to psychologists. The information about the CEO and his decision is identical across the two scenarios, and therefore you would expect judgments about the CEO’s intentions to be similar. So how do we explain these findings?

The common explanation for these divergent judgments is that the (im)morality of the CEO’s actions biases people’s judgments of his intentions—allowing harm seems intentional, but allowing help doesn’t. There have been various experimental retorts to this account (e.g., Guglielmo & Malle, 2010; Machery, 2008; Mallon, 2008; Nichols & Ulatowski, 2007), yet it remains one of the most resilient empirical findings in the moral literature, generalizing to different (though conceptually similar) cases and across cultures (See Knobe, 2010 for a review).

Not morality, but valence detection

On the face of it, this seems to be compelling evidence for morality biasing people’s judgments of intentions. However, this hypothesis has a key, logical requirement—in order for moral judgments to bias intentionality judgments, it must be true that people make judgments of blame before they make judgments of intentionality.

Unfortunately this hypothesis is not well supported by the experimental work. One problem is that none of the studies that purportedly support the hypothesis measure whether people make blame judgments before they make intentionality judgments. Thus, evidence for the key, logical requirement of the hypothesis is lacking. Another problem is that other research has shown non-moral things like norms (e.g., most people eat pasta with a fork) can produce divergent judgments comparable to the CEO cases even when moral content is lacking (Machery, 2008; Uttich & Lombrozo, 2010).

If people aren’t making judging blame before intentionality, and if morality isn’t necessary to produce the divergent types of judgments seen in the CEO cases, how do we explain the persistent fact that people believe that the CEO harmed the environment intentionally, but helped it unintentionally?

One alternative explanation is that people are sensitive to the valence (good vs. bad) of the outcomes in the CEO cases, and people adopt different thresholds for evaluating intentionality for good and bad behavior. This could still be a problematic bias, but I argue that it may be
adaptive (Monroe, Dillon, Guglielmo & Malle, in prep).

Consider a 2x2 space for good and bad behaviors. Perceptions of intent are on one side, and reality is on the other. The matrices are similar in most respects. Outcomes are best when people correctly identify intentional and unintentional actions (the ‘Hits’ and ‘Correct rejections’).

False positives are at least slightly problematic, but not especially costly. Believing that someone hurt you intentionally, when it was accidental may result in a damaged relationship or social censure for unjust blame. Similarly, believing that help was intentional when it was accidental might result in unnecessary (and potentially costly) reciprocal action or to expecting future benefits that never materialize.

The key difference between the two matrices is in the cost of ‘misses.’ Mistakenly believing that help was accidental when it was intentional probably carries some nominal cost, but this cost is likely very small. For example, the CEO might be saddened that his pro-environment attitude wasn’t appreciated.

Negative Behaviors

Reality

Intentional

Unintentional

Perceptions of intent

Intentional

Hit

False Positive

Unintentional

Miss

Correct rejection

Positive Behaviors

Reality

Intentional

Unintentional

Perceptions of intent

Intentional

Hit

False Positive

Unintentional

Miss

Correct rejection

Misses are costly when acts are negative

Missing an intentional harm, by contrast, is extremely costly.

Imagine being the target in a knife-throwing act. If your partner nicks you in the first act you want to be sure of whether that was intentional or accidental. In this case it is
adaptive to set a very low threshold for detecting intent because an error could be fatal. If the nick was accidental, then repeating the act tomorrow is safe (at least as safe as being the target in a knife throwing act can be). However, if that nick was intentional, then one should think twice before signing up for the next show. In the same way, missing the CEO’s harmful intentions towards the environment allows him to continue polluting; whereas, being overly sensitive to intention saves the environment from further danger.

Morality certainly colors the way we view the world, but not in the way you might think. People do not make full-blown judgments of blame that go on to bias their impressions of intent. Instead, the valence of a behavior changes the threshold people use to judge intent, and it does so in a way that is
adaptive, erring on the side of protecting us from the intentional harm we might otherwise miss.